Silver halide color photographic materials are exposed to light imagewise and are developed with an aromatic amine color-developing agent, and the resulting oxidized product of the developing agent and dye image-forming couplers (hereinafter abbreviated as couplers) interact to form dye images. Generally, in a color photographic material, a combination of a yellow coupler, a cyan coupler, and a magenta coupler is used.
In this method, generally, as a cyan coupler, a phenol or naphthol cyan coupler; as a magenta coupler, a 5-pyrazolone or pyrazolotriazole coupler; and as a yellow coupler, an acylacetamide yellow coupler are used.
The performance required for these couplers generally includes, for example, that they undergo coupling reactions quickly with the oxidized product of a color-developing agent, such as a p-phenylenediamine derivative in a color developer, whose coupling speed is high enough to be able to form dyes; that they can form dyes having satisfactory densities immediately after being processed; and that the storage stability of the color images obtained by processing them is good. However, it is very difficult to select couplers that can satisfy all of these requirements, and a photographic material is required wherein the balance among the color-forming couplers of three colors, that is, yellow, magenta, and cyan, is good to satisfy the above requirements.
In particular, in the case of cyan couplers, a decrease in the concentration of the cyan color-formed dye due to the leuco-dye formation (insufficiency of cyan color formation) is liable to occur in a bleaching solution or a bleach-fix solution in which the oxidizing agent has been fatigued or in which a reducing agent (e.g., a color-developing agent) carried in by the photographic material has accumulated, and its improvement is desired.
In the case of color photographic materials for prints, in many cases color prints are stored for a long period of time in an album and, although the time the prints are exposed to light is short, when they are stored in a dark place high in temperature and humidity for a long period of time, fading is a problem in many cases. With respect to heat-fading in darkness, magenta is the highest in fastness, and yellow and then cyan are liable to fade. Therefore, when color prints are stored for a long period of time, the color balance among the three colors is disadvantageously lost.
To improve insufficiency of cyan color formation, 2-acylaminophenol cyan couplers are described, for example, in JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) No. 117249/1985, and 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,895,826; and these have an effect to a certain extent. Further, combinations of 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers with novel cyan couplers are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,770,988.
Further, as a technique for improving the preservability of color images, a method for improving the color balance by a combination of a specific magenta coupler with a specific cyan coupler is described in JP-A No. 73260/1987, and combinations of specific yellow, magenta, and cyan couplers are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,748,100.
Any of the above techniques shows an improving effect to some extent, but none of them bring about improvement wherein loss of color balance due to insufficiency of color formation of cyan couplers and due to fading of color images obtained by processing is completely obviated.
Moreover, recently, in order to meet the clients' demands or to preserve the natural environment, so-called rapid processing, wherein the development time is short; development processing which is substantially free from benzyl alcohol; processing wherein the amount of water is small or no water is used; and processing with a processing solution wherein the ratio of and the amounts of components are drastically changed in the running test state, are performed. In such processing, particularly, it is required to prevent the occurrence of insufficiency of color formation of cyan couplers and to improve preservability of the color image obtained by the processing.